I’ve been working on more stories behind the songs I released while signed to 4AD in the 1990s. A lot of my lyric subject matter draws on my own personal experiences.
I’m also writing a memoir where the songs weave in and out of what was happening in my life at key moments. Some of the memories can be quite painful to dig around in. And I’m conscious that I want to get the historical autobiographical dates, times and places right. I’ve already written about the boxes of archive ephemera I’ve been sorting through. I’ve also been drawing on sharing memories with friends and family, which has sparked off some lively conversations.
Rather than publish any of more song stories before I’ve got all the details clear in my head - I thought I’d share an extract from my draft of the memoir. It may or may not making it into the final book, but I was writing about one of the songs, and I had a mental detour to a time in the 1960s when I was twelve. While I was a very shy, unconfident kid - I could also be wilful and impulsive.
So here’s a bit of a detour - around the kitchen floor.
Linoleum
In the 1990s, when we were doing a radio interview, the host asked my brother Chris if there was a special Saturday smell he remembered from childhood - something he associated with home and love. I expect the host was imagining “jam making” - or “freshly baked cookies.” My brother’s response was, “Bleach.” And I knew what he meant.
Our mother was a meticulous housekeeper. Saturday mornings we would wake up to the sounds and smells of her blitzing the kitchen and bathroom with all-purpose chlorine bleach. In our home that stuff was used for everything from first aid to disinfecting toilets, refrigerators and kitchen countertops.
Some mornings there also would be the smell of paint. Whenever we moved into a new apartment with a worn linoleum, Mumma would spruce it up while the kids were all in bed and out of the way. First, she’d lay down a grey background, then take a small brush and swirl black and white paint over the surface. My mother was the Jackson Pollock of the kitchen floor.
But with four heavy footed kids, a painted floor, however artfully made, doesn’t last long. When we’d lived at Prince Street a couple of years, she broke with tradition and bought some new linoleum - enough to cover the entire kitchen floor, which was pretty large. Mumma would save on costs by laying the flooring herself and it would be delivered on Saturday. Twelve-year-old me was tasked with receiving it while everyone else was down at the Stop & Shop getting the groceries in. Mumma said, “Just get the delivery guys to leave it in the kitchen and I’ll be back in an hour.” What could go wrong?
When the delivery men came, they deposited the tall cylinder of rolled-up linoleum in the kitchen. It was wrapped in clear plastic. Mumma had said just leave it til she got home, but I couldn’t resist peeling back a bit of the wrapping and peeking inside. The surface was facing inwards and it was shiny, new and gorgeous. But someone had ruined the effect by stamping ugly company logos all over it. I thought I’d help my mother by removing these.
I undid the plastic and made an experimental swipe with a soapy bathtub sponge. The logo ink came off easy-peasy. So I moved on and cleaned off the next set of logos. And then the next. What I hadn’t realised was that as I continued my work, I was spiralling ever deeper inside the roll of linoleum. When I had finished, I was at its centre. I tried to backwards-spiral my way out, but I must have turned the wrong way, because the tube of linoleum started to tighten around me. My arms became pinned to my sides. My knees could bend, but only a little. I looked up and the top end of the tube was several feet above my head. I was stuck inside a roll of linoleum.
I shouted, then remembered Nobody’s home. I thought, What if I die in here and no one knows?! I imagined weeks after I’d gone missing, my family saying, Oh well, we might as well make the kitchen nice - and their horror as they unrolled the linoleum and my mummified corpse tumbled out. Then I had a brainwave. Maybe I could use gravity. I leaned hard against the cylinder and my weight caused it to topple over with a loud thump! Now on the floor, I was able to extend my upper body, and then contract the lower part so that I moved along in small increments. And in the manner of an inch worm exiting a drinking straw, I gradually emerged out the top of the tube of linoleum.
An hour later I was lying on my bed, re-reading a Beatles fan club magazine, when I heard the apartment door open and the voices of my family in the hallway. Mumma called out, “Heidi - did the delivery guys come?” I called back, “Yup.” I was too embarrassed to tell her about my narrow escape from a bizarre and idiotic death inside a roll of kitchen flooring.
© Heidi Berry, 2024. All rights reserved.